What is Phishing?

Phishing is an attempt to acquire personal information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication, typically by Email, Voice, or Text.

How can Phishing affect you?

One of the ways that cyber criminals attack users is to send Phishing Emails to entice the recipient into providing personal information or to download malware to their machines which can impact the entire Auburn network. 

Upcoming Phishing Exercises

In addition to annual cybersecurity training, Auburn University will begin to conduct Phishing Exercises (training) to measure our adherence to safe cybersecurity practices.   This training includes sending emails that should be recognized by the users as fraudulent.   The goal of these exercises is employee training, and the individual results of the training will not be shared with management.  This testing will begin in November and will be a staggered approach that will continue indefinitely. Not everyone will receive these emails at the same time.

The Report Message Button

Microsoft has also rolled out a new “Report Message”. This button is the Office of Information Technology’s preferred method for reporting a suspected Phishing scheme.

The new button is located under the “Report Message” dropdown menu on Outlook.  Please click this link for an Instructional Video.

If you do not know the sender and the message is advertising or offensive, selecting “Junk” in this drop down will report the message to our Cyber Team as well as Microsoft, and will move the message out of your Inbox and into the Spam folder. 

If a message is attempting to lure you into disclosing personal information, you can select “Phishing.”  A copy of the message will be sent to our Cyber Team as well as Microsoft to help update the filters.  The message will also be moved from your Inbox to your Junk Email folder.

If you know the sender and you are expecting the message, or it is mistakenly marked as junk, you can use selecting “Not Junk.”  This will move the message from the Junk Email folder back to your inbox.

For more information about the Report Message add-in, please refer to this link.

You can find more information about Cybersecurity and steps you can take to reduce Phishing at aub.ie/cybersecurity and then click on Phishing.